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Kindness Costs Nothing

Two weeks ago I was sitting at home around 9 pm reading a book when I received the text message below. Maggie Espada, one of our high school Spanish teachers, shared this story with me. It made me happy, grateful, and proud to serve in this community. Hopefully, you feel the same after reading it. Remember, kindness costs nothing.

“In a world that people can be so harsh at times, there are moments that pure kindness can be shown that can move someone to tears. I teach Spanish 1 this year and 8 ELL students. My Spanish students are eager to learn Spanish but I have quickly learned that it is to communicate with our ELL students. Some students are even learning Spanish on their own in order to communicate with them.

Today is day 6 of school and one of my ELL students took me aside to tell me something. She is a shy, sweet girl whom I can tell underneath her hard exterior is a funny and witty young lady. Anyways she was smiling and handed me two crinkled pieces of paper. It was a note from two of her classmates introducing themselves and asking to be friends in Spanish. She was grinning from ear to ear and asked if I could help her respond back in English.

She smiled the whole time she wrote and when we were done I said “ Congrats in your first step to making friends here in the U.S. you may not have felt it but I always knew you are right where you belong and they see it too.” She smiled folded them up and put them in her bag and joined her siblings as they left. Kindness cost nothing but gives so much. A note was all it took to make a little immigrant girl feel accepted in her new home. Again kindness cost nothing. ”